The full impact of budget cuts on the lives of the elderly is disclosed in new
figures showing a sharp fall in the number of people receiving day-to-day
help.

While struggling councils have battled to maintain spending on care for those with the most severe needs, services seen by many as a lifeline, such as meals-on-wheels or day centres, have been slashed.

Figures compiled for council chiefs show that the number of older people in England receiving meals delivered to their home has halved in just two years.

The number attending day care centres is down by more than a quarter since 2011 while almost 10 per cent fewer people receive home care.

There have also been cuts in the numbers having specialist equipment installed their homes to help them maintain their independence longer and the numbers going into short term care.

The reductions come despite an overall surge in the number of people reaching old age over the same period.

Campaign groups said that it amounted to a “silent assault” on elderly people’s basic quality of life, masked by efforts to maintain care for those in the most dire need.

But social services chiefs said the figures did not show how services are being “redesigned” with traditional means of support such as meals-on-wheels being replaced by other approaches.

Councils have cut the amount they spend on elderly and disabled people by a fifth in three years – a reduction of £2.7 – but have largely concentrated on so-called “efficiencies” rather than closing services.

However most have tightened up their eligibility criteria so that only those in most severe need qualify.

The report compiled for the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services (Adass) shows that there are just over 714,000 over-65s receiving “community based services”, a drop of 15 per cent in just two years.

The numbers receiving meal deliveries has dropped by 48 per cent to 38,000 while day care numbers are 26 per cent lower.

The report warns that it will be a “challenge” to meet Government calls to develop so-called preventive services – designed to keep people out of hospitals and care homes – given the cuts to basic services.

Neil Duncan-Jordan of the National Pensioners Convention said:

“The quality of older people’s lives, particularly vulnerable older people, is systematically being chipped away and it is often going unnoticed.

“These services have been cut and cut for years and now it looks like the whole edifice is starting to fall away.”

“It is widely recognised that the whole system is in crisis but this report shows that it is in collapse.

“What we are largely seeing is our most vulnerable older people, who often go unnoticed and suffer in silence finding the services that they rely on being slashed and that is having a very dramatic effect on the quality of their lives.”

But Sandie Keene, president of Adass, said that the figures showed how councils were facing “difficult choices” but added that they did not fully capture the way services such as meals-on-wheels are being replaced by new methods.

“The evidence is uncertain at the moment,” she said.

“Certainly there are fewer people getting meals when we record it in the traditional way but actually people are getting meals through different ways.”

Similarly, she said the dramatic drop in the numbers attending day centres partly reflected the fact that people have asked for other, less formal arrangements such as escorted shopping trips.

She said: “Some people are being affected by the tough choices but it is a little bit about affecting a smaller number of people for the greater good of larger numbers of people in the short to medium term.”

Michelle Mitchell, director general of Age UK, said: "The dramatic fall in the numbers of older people receiving local authority care services is extremely worrying.

"Local authorities are increasingly restricting support to people with the highest needs which means that people who need a small amount of assistance to have an acceptable quality of life receive nothing.

"Increased charges for local authority support have also resulted in people deciding that they have no choice but to do without.

"The suggestion that better provision of re-ablement to help people back into independent living after time in hospital means that fewer people need longer term care does not stand up; the overall number of older people who receive these services is small and in some areas has actually decreased."